


Enter Sandman

by belleweather



Category: Supernatural, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Bad decisions theater, M/M, beware what you ask for, jealous!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-05
Updated: 2009-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27985842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belleweather/pseuds/belleweather
Summary: After seeing Dean and Castiel in an intimate moment, Sam seeks out something that will kill an Angel
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Enter Sandman

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2009 and posted on Livejournal. 
> 
> (An extra A/N for fans of Sandman: I’ve played very fast and loose with Sandman canon and time line in order to get things to line up with Supernatural. Basically, this takes place in an alternate Sandman Universe wherein anything having to do with Hell and the key thereto still happened, but was happening with Lilith rather than Lucifer. And where Duma and Ramiel don’t exist. None of this is in any way important to the story.)

Sam is frozen for a long second just looking at the picture in front of him, framed by the open window. He sees Dean’s muscles bunching, the curve of Castiel’s head against his brother’s leg, and hears the soft sounds of sex coming from them both. He feels the darkness and the call of the demon blood rise inside of him as he watches Dean’s hips buck and the angel’s fingers digging so tight into the skin of his brother’s hips, sees him swallowing as Dean rocks through the aftershocks of his orgasm. Castiel’s face looks transported, as if this is something holy as he pulls off Dean’s cock and tilts his head upward for a kiss, and Sam’s stomach is roiling and his pulse is pounding hot in at his temples as he very deliberately forces himself to turn away.

His feet go out from under him and he sits down hard on the concrete of the stoop. The siding of the ratty cabin they’re staying in his warm against his back. Staring out at the asphalt parking lot and the roiling grasses of the prairie beyond, with his fingers digging painfully into his palms, he can feel his fury rising up to overwhelm him. Dean is his. Only his. He should be possessed, owned by Sam. He always has been, before either of them were old enough to understand it. And they’d been tied together by something stronger than blood — by want and need and spit and come and no one else can have Dean like that, not ever.

His skin is itching, crawling against him and he feels twitchy and hair triggered; like he can’t stay still, but if he moves he’s going to shoot everything in sight. His fury has called the craving and he wants so painfully that for a moment his vision becomes a red haze and he can feel the pounding of the pulse, and the hot, sticky copper tang of Ruby’s blood against his tongue. He can almost feel the power rushing through his veins and knows in a rush the mayhem he would unleash. He shakes with it, quakes against it, and waits for it to subside. After long seconds, the craving passes and in it’s wake Sam can see what he needs to do -what he wants to do- with an almost painful clarity.

*  
It takes Sam a day or two to collect what he needs — black cat bones aren’t exactly thick on the ground in Niwot North Dakota. Dean finally passes out on the bed from a combination of his pain pills, Miller Genuine Draft, and a Hill Street Blues marathon on TNT. Sam moves slowly so as not to wake him, gathering up his supplies, his jacket and the keys to the Impala. He gives his brother a long, lingering glance before closing the door.

He finds a deserted crossroads twenty miles north of down, down a dirt road so old it’s barely even a track. The area looks like old-growth prairie, surrounding him with grass almost tall enough to hide the Impala. It’s scrubby and dirty and deserted and reminds Sam strongly of the last time he did this. He steps out and digs a hole by the light of the rising moon, noticing off-hand that both the digging and the waiting are harder when he doesn’t have most of a bottle of Jameson’s in him. The whispering of the wind in the tall grass and the rustling of bugs and animals seems almost deafening while he waits. It isn’t long before the grasses part and a red-headed woman steps out into the crossroads. Her white dress flutters around her bare, tanned legs and Sam finds himself fascinated by the freckles that dust across her nose and cheeks.

She smiles at him. “Sam Winchester,” she drawls slowly. “Of all the crossroads in all the world, you had to wander into mine.”

"Cut the crap." He says, harshly. "I’m here to make a deal."

"Yes." She purrs, her lips turning up at the corners in an almost-smile. "I know. And believe me, we’re all finding this hilarious. You are going to be the focus of our water-cooler conversation for weeks, Samuel." She pauses, as if she’s expecting him to laugh. He doesn’t. She continues with "I can’t help you, though. Much as I might like to."

"You haven’t even heard what I’m asking for yet."

"It doesn’t matter. I. can't. Help. you."

"I thought your job was to make deals?" he says, with rancor.

Her smile is biting. "Sam, Sam, Sam. Don't look at me like that. It doesn’t matter who you ask and it doesn’t matter what you want. Word has come up from down below. You can go to a million crossroads in a hundred countries and speak to a thousand demons and they’ll give you no different answer."

His anger is back, red and relentless. Sam reaches out with his hand and then with his mind; gripping, twisting and pulling. The demon's head goes back, her body twists and she howls. Her screaming echoes off into the sky long after he's released her. She hides her head a moment, catching her breath, and then laughs. "I can't help you, Sam -- neither can anyone else. Not as though you'd need our help anyway. You're the fucking Morningstar's favorite kid; you've got more juice than I could ever hope to have. There isn't a damned thing I can do for you that you couldn't do for yourself, if you really tried. But I know people who know people... I might be able to tell you who can help you."

"Oh yeah? Another wild demon goose chase? Not. Interested." his voice is harsh, and he wants to reach out for her again. He can feel his barely-leashed power prowling in his mind.

"No. Not a demon. Something way older."

Sam cocks and eyebrow. "And what exactly would you want in return?"

"A favor. Just one."

"That’s all?" Sam cocks his eyebrow, looking down at her. "Just a favor?"

"Having the Boy King owe me a favor? That's pretty much all I need."

"You know what they say about things that are too good to be true..." Sam points out.

She smirks at him. “You have absolutely no idea what you are, do you? What we think of you or what you can do?” she asks, shaking her head. Sam keeps his mouth shut; he’s pretty sure that the question is rhetorical anyway. After a long moment staring past one another in the moonlight, the demon relents. “The man you’re looking for is called Daniel.” She says, begrudgingly.

“Daniel? Okay, and how do I get to see this Daniel?”

She sidles up closer, her chest pressing against him, her fingers curling into his tee-shirt and pulling his face down to hers, into a soft, cool kiss. “You sleep, Sam.” She says against his lips. “All you have to do is sleep.” And in a puff of sulfur, she’s gone and he’s alone in the crossroads, with the prairie grasses shifting and rustling all around him.

Shaking his head and feeling cheated, Sam climbs back into the Impala and stifles a yawn as he kicks the car into gear. He can smell the sunrise coming on the breeze, and the birds are starting to wake and sing by the time he gets back to the motel. Dean is still asleep when he eases the door open, stretched out under just the sheet with his feet sticking off the edge of the bed and his socks looking oddly bright in the half-light. Sam Winchester slides under the sheets of his own bed, lays his head down, and dreams.

*

The next thing that registers is that he is standing in the very center of an enormous, light-filled room. Sun streams down on him through tall clerestory windows, painting the marble floor with the all the colors of the stained glass above him, in sinuous patters of vines and fire. He stares up, turns his head and then walks around in a small circle in order to get a good look and his footsteps are too quiet to fill up the huge space.

As he turns, he sees that there is a man sitting on an enormous marble on a throne at the far end of the room. He walks closer. The man’s clothes are white and strange, wrapping around his arms and legs like the winding on a mummy but covered over with something that looks like the tabard of an ancient knight. He seems timeless ; his body looks younger than Sam’s, but something in his dark-rimmed eyes tells Sam he’s old — old like the rocks of the crust of the earth, old like the stars are old — and oddly familiar.

“Daniel?” Sam asks, when he finally comes close enough to speak. “Are you Daniel?” Sam wonders for a second what he’s going to say if this is, in fact, the man he’s been sent to see, other than that gee, a nameless crossroad demon sent him and was he perhaps in the mood to do favors? Particularly ones that might lead to homicide. Or angel-cide.

The man in white rises slowly to his feet. “Yes,” he says and though his voice is quiet, it fills up the cavernous space. “It is a pleasure to see you here, Samuel Winchester.”

“I... um... thanks.” Sam stutters out after a moment, surprised to hear his name. “You know who I am. Do you… do you know what I’m looking for?” he asks, the question tumbling out of him all in a rush.

“I have seen what you dream of.” Daniel answers, and Sam is acutely conscious that this is an evasion and that the man is not directly answering his question. Sam dreams of fire and blood and Dean’s skin beneath his mouth and this man couldn’t possibly see all that and look at him with such cool detachment and nonchalance. “I have seen inside your dreams.” Daniel repeats, ”and I know what it is that you seek.”

Sam’s blood runs cold. “Can you help me find it?”

“Perhaps. There is one thing that can do what you look to do; that can kill and Angel of the Lord. But it only exists here, within my realm. It is within my power alone to give it to you. If you wish.”

“Of course I wish!” Sam says quickly. He’d been willing to make a deal with a devil, after all.

“The thing you seek… it comes with a warning, Mister Winchester. The warning is this: Hell isn’t a place, and the adversary isn’t a person. They’re both ideas. And as a very wise old friend once told me, you cannot kill an idea, only a point of view.”

“Uh, yeah.” Sam mumbles, confusedly. “Thanks for the input.”

Daniel looks at him and smiles sadly. His face is full of regret and a very old sadness. For a moment Sam sees something else surrounding him like an aura...a man who is dark where Daniel is light, and older than the foundations of the universe, yet so very sad. And then, the moment passes. Daniel is standing in front of Sam, offering him his hand.

*

The first thing that Sam noticed was the breeze; the air inside Daniel's echoing throne room had been still, almost supernaturally so. But here, there was a hot and dry breeze that smelled of spices and tickled through his hair. He was standing in a broad low pavilion, where tall columns carved like tress or flowers supported the roof and looking out between them Sam could see sand dunes that stretched off into the distance, and stars so bright and plentiful that they nearly hurt his eyes.

The room he was in was lit only by fire -- four great braziers burning merrily in the corners, their light reflecting against cool stone walls where bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics of a thousand cats seemed to pounce and frolic in the light. Cats of all colors and shapes wind their way around Sam's denim-covered legs, purring contentedly for a moment and then wandering off into the night.

"Where are we?" he asks Daniel, who stands silently by his side.

"Inside the dream of an old friend." he replies, another answer which makes no sense at all, and yet somehow in this strange dreaming world makes perfect sense.

"Dream of the Endless, my old friend?" comes a voice from behind the colonnade. "Is that you?"

A cloud passes over Daniel's face, but he steps forward. "It is, and it isn't."

Sam steps around a particular row of pillars to come face to face with Catwoman. He realizes shortly that thinking of her as Catwoman is probably horribly insulting, but it's the best he can do. Because she's beautiful and unearthly and neither entirely cat nor entirely woman. She reclines delicately on pillows laid across a raised bed on the otherside of the room, and the light of the fires glimmers across her shiny black coat. She has a shell-like golden necklace around her neck, her eys are brilliant blue. Her mouth is cat-like, but none the less Sam can see that she’s smiling, pretty and indulgent, at Daniel. Sam wishes, for a moment, that Dean were here. Not that he wants Dean to know what he is up to, since he’s sure he wouldn’t approve. But just to see if his theory that Dean would flirt with anything with a pulse actually does extent to cats.

"Nonesense." she says to Daniel, with a bit of a purr. "You are always Dream, no matter what other titles you might abdicate."

Daniel's smile is warm, and he goes over to sit on the edge of her dias. "I have come to beg a favor of you, Lady Bast."

"I am always willing to do favors for the Dream King", she purrs. Sam feels himself blush.

"I’m not asking a favor for myself. This boy is here as the supplicant. He seeks a vial of Queres.” Being called a boy rankles Sam, although he’s forced to admit that next to a man who is apparently the King of Dreams and an ancient Egyptian Cat Goddess, he probably does look kind of like an infant.

He can feel the weight of Bast’s eyes on him. “And what, young man, do you know about the Queres?” she asks. “It’s our richest, most priceless perfume and I’m not inclined to bestow it upon just anyone.”

Sam turns to Daniel, and gives him a look. Daniel’s face is impassive; he appears to be on his own. “I… um..” He stutters, before deciding to go for the truth. “I know almost nothing about it, except that it might be able to kill an angel.”

“An angel?” Bast asked Daniel, plainly not understanding the word.

“A Melakh Adonai.” He says quietly. “One of the hebrew ha-qodeshim, come into human form.”

Bast’s laughter is purring, liquid and infectious. “Oh, them! Oh, lovely! Of course I shall help your supplicant, Lord Dream.” She sits up, her sides still shaking with repressed laughter, and glides sinuously to her feet. “I will return with your boon.” She says to Sam, and walks out of the room.

Sam’s face must reflect his confusion, because the moment she’s gone Daniel turns toward him. “The God of the Hebrews is newly come to Egypt.” He says, by way of explaination. “In the years past there was nothing wrong with a man or a woman devoting themselves to any of the Gods, praying and giving offerings as they need. And eventually they all come to Lady Bast. For beauty and love when they’re young, and for the ointments and unctions and perfumes for embalming when they are dying and wish to have their mouths opened in order to breathe in the next world. But if they can only believe in one God, they won’t come to Bast anymore with sacrifices or devotion. She is worried. And she is right to be.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. Minutes later, Bast returns with a small phial balanced delicately between her two paws. “This is what you seek, Child.” She says, handing the small, rounded bottle over to him. It’s heavy, even though it’s small, and made out of a white stone - alabaster, maybe? He can smell it from here; spicy and sweet, like fankincense and cinnamon and the sweet copal one of his dad’s Bruja friends would burn on Halloween. It’s intoxicating and sends his head spinning. He breaths deeply of the dry, sweet air to clear it. “It’s used to bless our dead before we give them over to Ra and send them to the next world. I don’t know if it will do what you seek. But you will have the hopes and prayers of a Goddess to go with you in your quest.”

Sam blushes, and thanks her for her kindness. She and Daniel sit back down on her chaise and he watches the cats come in and arrange themselves around them, butting their heads into the Goddess and the King for scratching as they set to talking quietly, ignoring Sam’s presence entirely.

The ampule in his hands, and Daniel's attention elsewhere, Sam gets the distinct feeling that the Dream King and the Lady would prefer to be alone. He follows a black and white kitten out of the pavillion and stands outside, looking at the stars. The high noise of the Lady Bastet's laughter and Daniel's deeper reply filters outside on the breeze, when all else is quiet. He can see a temple rising in the distance and the vast space of desert. The cat winds himself between Sam's legs, making inquisitive 'prt' noises. Just as he bends down to give it a good scratch behind the ears, he finds himself awakening to their dingy motel room, to Dean's hand on his shoulder and Whitesnake on the clock-radio.

Dean heads into the bathroom and Sam hears the clank and whoosh of the shower starting. He rubs his eyes, his mind still half in the odd dream-world he must have conjured up from the demon’s words. It takes him several minutes of listening to the radio morning show Dean had left on and peering around the hotel room before he’s functional enough to get out of bed. When he moves to get up, the blankets shift around him and for the first time he notices the heavy alabaster bottle of perfume lolling against the white hotel sheets.


End file.
